Uprates completed at Florida plants

Florida Power & Light (FPL) is celebrating the completion of a major five-year upgrade program that has added over 500 MWe of capacity to four reactors at its Turkey Point and St Lucie sites.

The uprates are the result of a 5-year major engineering project (Image: FPL)

Turkey Point 4 was the last of the units to undergo an extended power uprate: work was completed at Turkey Point 3 and St Lucie 1 and 2 in 2012. The overall project was initially projected to add a total of 399 MWe, but according to FPL it surpassed that mark by end of 2012, and it is now estimated that the major engineering work at the plants will add around 30% more capacity than originally projected. The power increase has been achieved through significant upgrades to plant systems and components, including feedwater pumps and high-pressure turbines.

FPL President Eric Silagy put the achievement into context: "By increasing the amount of power that our nuclear plants can generate, this investment added the equivalent of a new, medium-sized power plant to Florida's generation fleet, without having to build one."

FPL says its investment in the uprate was made possible by the state of Florida's nuclear cost recovery framework, enabling it to pay off some of the development and interest costs associated with the project prior to completion of work at the plant, in term enabling the utility to keep long-term costs down.